How Canada's new Liberal government plans to deprive Canadians of their Charter rights

It is becoming clearer by the day that our newly elected federal government has an insatiable appetite for talking progressive while governing conservative. I suspect this will be our new normal until election time. The behaviour pattern is obvious. I doubt Mr Trudeau's feel-good activism on that frontier will carry the Liberals much longer. Canadians are catching on to them.

Anyhow, as a quick reminder, the Canadian Supreme Court declared that parts of the Criminal Code that criminalize assisted dying are unconstitutional.

Canada's Liberal government introduced its legislation on assisted dying in parliament.  It is being debated in committee today.

Here's the legislative draft proposal

A person has a grievous and irremediable medical condition if

(a) they have a serious and incurable illness, disease or disability;

(b) they are in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability;

(c) that illness, disease or disability or that state of decline causes them enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable to them and that cannot be relieved under conditions that they consider acceptable; and

(d) their natural death has become reasonably foreseeable, taking into account all of their medical circumstances, without a prognosis necessarily having been made as to the specific length of time that they have remaining.

Compare that to the Supreme Court's criteria:

'‘competent adult person who (1) clearly consents to the termination of life and (2) has a grievous and irremediable medical condition (including an illness, disease or disability) that causes enduring suffering that is intolerable to the individual in the circumstances of his or her condition.'

Ii is trivially true that 'd' in the legislative draft is too restrictive, given the criteria the Court has set. Terminal illness is not a defensible threshold condition for access. Patients do not have to be in an advanced state of irreversible decline in capability either. Excluding not terminally ill patients from access who meet the above mentioned Supreme Court criteria would clearly violate Canadians' Charter rights. 

Government released today its rationale for the proposed policy.  

Here we go,

Restricting access to only those individuals whose death is reasonably foreseeable allows them to choose a peaceful, medically assisted death where their medical circumstances are such that the dying process would otherwise be painful, distressing, frightening, prolonged or otherwise lacking dignity from their perspective. This approach respects autonomy during the passage to death, while otherwise prioritizing respect for human life and the equality of all people regardless of illness, disability or age. It also furthers the objective of suicide prevention and the protection of the vulnerable. Recognizing the complexity of the legal and social issues associated with medical assistance in dying, this approach strikes an appropriate balance between the competing rights, interests and values. 

It's plain for everyone to see that the Rationale is not actually a rationale as it does not explain at all why terminal illness is introduced as an eligibility threshold. 

The Justice department's briefing acknowledges the problem, it states,

This could impact the section 7 Charter rights of those who are suffering intolerably as a result of a serious and incurable condition, but whose natural death is not reasonably foreseeable. This could include individuals suffering only from a mental illness, and individuals with physical disabilities who lack the physical capacity to end their own lives. Persons with mental illness or disabilities would only have access to medical assistance in dying if they meet all of the eligibility criteria.

And yet, our government (lacking a rationale to actually respond to this concern), pushes ahead anyway. I trust you will savour the Catholic language introduced in the rationale, where government prioritizes 'respect for human life' over our Charter right to make decisions about our continuing existence based on competent, autonomous choice and our actual quality of life. Intractable human suffering is apparently of no concern to the Liberals. Go figure. Truly, this is legislation the Harper Conservatives could have drafted. 

US Health Care Debate

I'm sure it's tempting to go on and on and on about the US health care debate, but really, the less said the better. So, the Democrats (a party nearly as sad and as spineless as the Liberals in Canada) barely managed to get what they consider a reform package thru the Congress where they have a massive majority. A lot more people will be able to access health care, that's about the only good news. The bad news is found all over the place. The skyrocketing share prices of major insurance companies tell you who the real winner of this exercise is: shareholders of insurance companies. There's no public option, so the milking of individual patients by insurance companies will continue. Wow, amazing reform this is! Then there have been those right-wingers (teabag, sandbag and otherwise) that went on and on and on about a government takeover of health care. I only wish there had been a government take-over. Sadly there wasn't. All this silly hand-waving about losing lack of control over one's health care was just mind boggling. I would prefer a government controlled health care system over one controlled by for-profits at any time. Why should control over my access to a given surgical procedure by an employee of a for-profit insurance company give me any more choice than if the same was undertaken by a doctor in a public health care system? Well, what can I say, having lived in countries with public health care (UK, Australia, Canada), government health care is preferable to for-profit health care at any time. It is that simple. It's cheaper and more efficient in terms of bang for your buck. You wouldn't expect US Americans that rely on Fox agitprop to realize that. Well, and Mr Obama, much like the Canadian Liberal's Ignatieff, should probably have gone into academia as opposed to politics. I wouldn't call his last minute scramble a 'fight' (of the political kind) for health care reform. More of a sell-out in terms of progressive politics.

Poor Canadians - voting on two non-starters

It's funny living in Canada these days. The next federal elections are probably closer than those in the USA yet the gun-toting Alaskan governor and her five children are higher on the Canadian agenda than local politics. There's no big surprise in this.

The current conservative minority government is run by a mean-spirited populist politician (Stephen Harper). His main claim to fame are a failed foreign minister (he left secret documents with his that time girlfriend, a woman with reported links to a local biker gang), a health minister whose main claim to fame are attacks on a harm reduction facility in Vancouver (the facility offers drug addicts access to clean needles as a means to reduce the occurrence of infectious diseases among drug users), cuts of federal arts programs, and other populist this-n-that. While these sorts of activities undoubtedly are designed to rally his redneck base, Harper would not stand a chance in hell to get a larger share of the vote in the upcoming elections (the economy is tanking...), the Liberals have kindly come to his help.

They elected Stephane Dion, a likeable but inept academic turned politician. In the middle of a serious economic crisis in the country, sky-high energy prices just ahead of another long Canadian winter his main claim to fame is to have proposed a tax increasing environmental policy. Our environment is important, very important, the policy is comprehensive and pretty good to my mind, BUT it isn't a straightforward bread-and-butter issue for most voters, so he's on to a losing streak. Indeed, that's what all the polls are showing. Dion's Liberals have also kept the Conservatives in power by means of not voting down their legislative program in the parliament for the last year or so.

So, the Canadians are faced with a mean spirited redneck who offers some kind of leadership versus a kind spirited liberal unable to offer any kind of leadership skills. No wonder they're watching CNN to see how things pan out south of the border...